Towards gender equity in urban outdoor sport spaces

The project Sports for Women in Urban Places (SW-UP) aims at gathering evidence on why and how to better create and direct women friendly outdoor Sport and Recreational Physical Activities (SRPA) spaces in urban environments. SW-UP is a cooperation between several European partners, coordinated by ALDA – the European Association for Local Democracy.

Conducting a survey amongst the adult population in the participating cities is one of the activities in the project; this activity was coordinated by the Mulier Institute.

The aim of the study was to shed more light on the (outdoor) sport participation of women and their motives, experienced barriers and required conditions for starting/continuing their participating in outdoor SRPA.

Data collection took place through the distribution of an online questionnaire in the respective countries and languages amongst adult residents of five South and Eastern European cities: Corbetta (Italy), Granollers (Spain), Guimarães (Portugal), Ramnicu Sarat (Romania) and Sofia (Bulgaria). The total number of valid responses was 1,035, with a majority of women respondents (84%), that were relatively well divided amongst the participating cities.

The results show that:

• men were more likely than women to be active in SRPA at least once a week (69% vs. 57%) and in outdoor SRPA activities (78% vs. 66%).
• the most important motivation to be or to become more active was to improve their health for both men (83%) and women (85%), followed by ‘to relax’ (women 55%, men 40%) and to lose weight (women 38%, men 41%). ‘To enjoy the environment’ was the fourth most mentioned motive by one in three women respondents.
• overall, women perceive more barriers to be active in outdoor SRPA compared to men. The largest experienced barrier for women respondents is that they have no other person to go with (30%), followed by not feeling safe (13%) and never having participated before in outdoor sports (12%).
• women who were already active in outdoor SRPA perceive less, but similar barriers as those who were not active or only active indoors.
• regarding age, especially young women wanted someone to go with and facilities adequate to both men’s and women’s needs. Older women place a higher importance to activities with no/low costs.